The next thing I was planning on doing was the wood deck for Part 5, but I had an unexpected diversion. The image below shows Part 5 with the deck tracings in red.

Notice that the hatch cover is not square, but rounded on the aft end. I had noticed this in several pictures of various fleet boats but since the pictures of the ones on Batfish were square, that’s the way I designed mine. However, looking through pictures on the Submarine museums.org site I found the pictures below (two pictures shown as one on the site). The covered hatch is clearly shown in these photos and it is round as round can be on the aft end.

So, I decided to make mine like that. It looks cooler anyway. Starting with the current design…

The first thing I did was draw a circle to intersect the sides and end then siced the part along the center line of this circle.

I then sliced it the other way, at the bottom of the battens.

I used the separate command to isolate the aft support beam…

…And deleted it.

Next, I opened the hatch file (the one without the pivot guide)…

…Copied it to the position of the existing hatch…

…And subtracted it from the aft (yellow) section of the hatch.

I copied the hatch from the file again, this time joining it to the forward part of the hatch.

Next I moved the circle I drew up and lofted it down through the hatch…

…And did an intersect command with the extrusion and the aft (yellow) part of the hatch.

Then I traced the end of the end batten and extruded it along a half circle to form the new end support.

To redo the braces on the underside of the cover, I first separated the two bars that were still “joined” even though they weren’t in contact.

I then moved the aft brace to the port side of the hatch cover…

…Traced the end and extruded the resulting rectangle to the other side of the cover…

Last night I started on the wood deck for Part 5. This morning I finished it.

However, there is a covered hatch near the forward end that of the part that needed to be replaced with the rounded version I made in the last post. I needed a good reference point, which I chose to be the center of the lowest circle at the base of the hatch.

Using the drawing from yesterday…

I copied it to the model.

I then extruded the rectangle up and out of the deck…

…And subtracted it.

To fill the corner holes back in, I extruded both the rectangle and the half rectangle-half circle down to the bottom of the hatch…

Subtracted the circle-rectangle from the rectangle…

…Joined everything to the deck and recolored it.

With the hatch replaced I turned my attention to the deck proper.

The image below shows the tracings resized and moved slightly as needed to fit the dimensions of my out of dimension deck battens.

The next image shows the extrusions through the deck…

Which were subtracted, leaving a holey deck.

Hatches were defined as before using batten sized rectangles which I extruded…

…And subtracted.

Next I added the hinges and handle hole.

I didn’t want to join them or subtract them until I copied them to the other hatches, so I decided to go ahead and define the edges of all of the hatches…

…Then I copied the hinges and handle to all of the hatches…

…Joined the hinges and subtracted the handles.

Slightly after joining them I realized that I had not filleted the corners, so I had to go back and do all of the edges individually. That little goof made this take longer than it should have. Oops! Next I copied the construction lines from a previous davit hole to the location of the one on Part 5.

I extruded the polylines…

…And subtracted them.

I was now ready to copy the deck to the part. I copied it above its location and made a very slight change in the slope. It is almost flat her, but not quite.

At this point, I had all sorts of problems. For some reason, the parts wouldn’t join, even when I did my incremental approach. It was rather frustrating. Finally, I tried copying the outline of the wood deck, extruding it down the same thickness as the deck (battens and under support), extruding the tracings through it like I did the real deck and subtracting them. I then moved this into position on the part and when I subtracted it, it worked. I was then able to join the wood deck to the part. Unfortunately, somehow the holes got all off whack, and so I had to repeat the procedure. To top it off my computer was doing an auto-update download and it got seriously bogged down and I did a lot of waiting on it. Finally though I got it attached with the holes aligned properly.

When I was sure it would join, I undid the join and trimmed the pointy battens around the covered hatch in much the same way as I did around the fairwater.

I then drilled the center hole through the davit hole by extruding a circle and subtracting it.

I then added the blow valves, first copying my template to the 2 locations on the part…

…Then joining the plate to the deck and subtracting the extruded circle from the assembly.

Last but not least, I added the As’s, using the template and the clipboard to copy them to the correct locations and orient them properly. I then joined, subtracted and joined the parts involved as before.

Another part is completed(?) and ready for printing. Now it’s on to Part 6.

It has been a good modeling weekend so far, and I have made good progress. Part 6 is now completed too. As usual I started with my tracings from the plans. There wasn’t much on this pasrt, just 3 hatches, 3 AS’s 2 blow valves and 2 longhorn cleats.

Because I have had a couple of alignment issues, I like to look at the tracings over the model before I start adding them to the deck. In this case, it was a good thing I did because things didn’t line up correctly. You can see in the image below that the racings show the cleat to be well forward of where I have it on the model.

Thinking that my tracings were wrong I copied them from station 80 instead of 0 and the tracings were basically on top of each other. That means that the cleats weren’t in the right place, so I had to cut them off. The first one went easy. I just copied another cleat on top of it…

…And subtracted it and Tada, it was gone.

The second one was a bit more obstinate. When I subtracted it, there were all sorts of slivers. So, I drew a box around it and subtracted that. It worked, but left more of a footprint showing where it was removed, as you can see in the image below. Fortunately, the wood deck took care of it. I then copied two new cleats and positioned them where they should be(?)

The rest of the process, you have seen before and there wasn’t anything different, so I won’t bore you with the details again. Here’s the semi-completed deck…

…And here it is on the Part, before finalizing the SA’s and blow valves.

I just completed Part 7, with only marginal difficulties. The first issue was positioning again. I don’t know what the heck happened but somehow some items are not positioned correctly. Looking at the deck tracings over Part 7, in the image below you can see that the aft hatch was off considerably.

Again thinking I might have incorrectly copied the tracings… I went to the deck drawing and copied them from STA 92, instead of 0. In the image below STA 92 is the vertical red line.

However, when I copied them to the model drawing, they were off a little, this most likely is due to the warpage in the drawings. I have no idea how I misplaced the hatch so badly.

Oh well, I had to redo it anyway and it wasn’t any harder to move it. I first extruded a rectangle and joined it to the part to fill the old one.

I then insert the complete covered hatch assembly into the deck at the correct location, (or closer anyway) and extruded the hatch cover outline down to the bottom of the hatch..

Subtracting the extrusion left the hatch cover sitting nicely on the surface.

After that it was relatively straight forward and went pretty quickly as there were only 3 hatches, 4 AS’s, 2 stop valves and a davit hole. The problem came when I decided that I needed to extrude the hinges that cross the battens all the way to the base for support. The first few worked OK but then they wouldn’t join. I found a work around but it was somewhat frustrating. Anyway, here is the semi-completed deck.

I started preparing to do the wood deck on Part 8, but had a change of plans. My design of the aft messenger buoy is flush with the surface just like the forward one. On Batfish, as she is now, the aft one is raised. I designed it flush thinking that it was raised as a museum exhibit so people could see the insides. I later learned that it was raised due to space limitations between the deck and pressure hull. So, since the buoy is on Part 8, I needed to change it before starting on the deck.

The design is based on three pictures, one that I took…

One that Tom took, that shows the insides better…

And one that Scott took of the forward buoy that really shows the inside, without the deck.

The image below shows the layout of my guidelines for the design mod from the top.

The next image shows it after I lofted the polylines together.

For the top, which I hadn’t detailed yet, I went to Part 2 and the forward buoy and redrew the polyline for the outline.

I copied the entire part along with the new polyline to the Part 8 drawing and rotated the polyline a wee bit since the deck is slightly sloped.

I then extruded the line through the deck into the interior of the model… (I don’t know what that thin strip is. It looks like I have some cleaning up to do.)

…Used the Intersect command…

…And deleted all but the top piece…

…Which I then sliced to make it thinner.

I then moved it to the position of the forward buoy. It was at quite a slope relative t the deck and the top of the buoy…

So I rotated it level.

The alignment was good from the top…

So I lowered it into the top of the buoy base.

I then joined the two pieces together and shelled it at 0.045”, leaving the bottom open…

…And lowered it into the deck.

I didn’t attach it because in the pictures the inside of the shell is cut out. I don’t know if this is the way it would have been when she was in service or if it would have been closed and is only open for viewing. I decided to make both versions until I know the answer to that question, then I can select the correct one. So I copied the buoy, Part 8 and a reference frame up and out of the way and drew a rectangle...

…Extruded it through one side of the buoy shell and subtracted it.

Next I ad libbed some inner workings using two spheres an extruded rectangle that I filleted, and a cylinder, that I also filleted…

I then sliced off the bottom and drilled a hole through the deck by extruding the initial outline of the buoy reduced to 75%.

I then joined everything to the deck (and also joined the original version to its deck).

So now I will wait until I learn which version I should use. If the latter, PE can be used for the brackets in the open space, as seen in the pictures.

Before continuing on with the wood main deck on the last two parts, I thought I would make a hatch davit. As I often do, I started by tracing the plans that I have. These particular plans aren’t of very good quality and the majority of the dimensions are illegible. The upper green line in the image below is the top of the main deck, so although it is interesting, I am only interested in what is above this point. The height is given as 7’, but the pipe is cut, so it isn’t to scale. The only true dimensions I could read are the diameter of the pipe and a dimension below the deck (magenta) that is 22”. After importing the plans into AutoCad, I used this dimension to scale the plans to size. The long green line is where the deck is if the pipe is extended to 7’. I then drew a polyline (a trimmed circle and two tangent lines joined together) on the centerline of the pipe and drew a circle with the proper diameter (3-1/2”, 0.03” at 1/144 scale) on the end.

Next, I extruded the circle using the polyline for the path.

I capped it off with a sphere of the same diameter.

For the end, I first used the plans to draw circles for the eye…

…Rotated the small one 90 degrees and extruded it around the circle.

To make the side supports I used the plans to draw a polyline (blue, mostly behind other lines)…

…That I positioned correctly and extruded.

I then winged it for the item on top revolving a circle and imbedding it in the pipe...

…Then added a flange and connection point on the bottom.

At this point I scaled it down to 1/144 scale and realizedthat I didn’t pay enough attention to dimensions when I drew it because the loop on the end was too small at 0.004” radius, so I increased it to 0.005”. Even though it is 25% larger than it should be, it still looks OK and should print too.

At this point, I was looking at pictures of Batfish and noticed that the davit on her was different than the one in the plans, so I decided to make it too. The pictures I used again included a picture that I took…

…A picture Tom sent me…

…And a picture I cropped from one Scott sent me.

To make it I used the same polyline for the shape, but started with a 0.05” square that I extruded along the polyline using a 0.89 taper, which resulted in a 0.03” square at the top. Recall that the diameter of the pipe in Version 1 was 0.03”.

I added the end making it 0.01” thick. The radius of the cut circle is 0.005”.

Next I added the rings on the side but they are way big at 0.005” to print, but I think they need to be there. They are fairly prominent.

At this point I tried copied the longhorn cleat to the side as seen in the second picture and reduced it. Unfortunately it was way too small so I contrived a simplified version using the longhorn cleat base and slicing off the horns.

The image below shows it completed, at least for now. I’m contemplating making it ribbed instead of just square but for now, what you see is what you get.

The image below shows the two designs side by side.

Here’s Version 1 on Part 2…

…And here’s Version 2 on Part 5.

I made them both their own parts upping the part count for the model to 38. If they both print OK and aren’t too fragile, I think I will use them both, even though they probably didn’t have both styles on board at the same time if she even ever had the version on the plans.

Last night I completed the main deck details. The image below shows the wood decking for Parts 8 and 9. All of the cutouts have been made and the hatches have been completed.

The deck pieces were copied over the model.

The deck for Part 8 was then lowered into place, as with the decks on previous parts,...

…And the three AS’s were completed.

At this point I realized that I had forgotten to add the torpedo loading skid, and so I added it. You can see the lines extending for Part 9 on the left.

To Part 9, I added the cutout for the torpedo loading hatch.

I also cut the battens square around the hatch opening…

…Then moved it into position on the part, and cut the grooves for the skid.

Next I added the AS next to the loading hatch and prepared to make the access hatch next to the capstan.

The following image shows a close up of the hatch after it was cut out and a hinge was added.

The image below shows the completed Part 9.

And here it is with the Type 2 davit installed…

…And with Part 10 the rudders, dive planes, props and shafts installed.

The davit hole is a bit close to the hatch, so I may move it, but I would have to move an AS too, which wouldn’t be easy, so I may leave it alone. It’s only noticeable if I want to put a davit there, but I haven’t decided yet. I’m also considering opening the aft torpedo loading hatch and making the skids, both internal and external, but if I do that, it will be after I finish the model. It would be cool though to build a little action scene with guys loading a torpedo. It would also be a lot of work, both in AutoCad and when I actually get to build the model.

If you see something I am forgetting, or have totally wrong, let me know. In the meantime, it’s on to the Bridge deck.

Well, I lied. I didn’t start on the Bridge deck yet. Instead I redid my Style 2 davit. I started by segmenting the base section into thirds…

…Which I used to create a polyline that I then tweaked to have more support, while still looking somewhat like the davit does in the few pictures I have.

.

I then copied this up the davit and scaled it to fit the section at this point.

I then copied it up above the bend, scaled it…

…And rotated it to the proper alignment.

I then copied and scaled it one more time to the top of the davit. In the image below you can see that there are three sections. The top one and bottom ones are on straight sections and can simply be lofted. The middle one is on the arc of a circle which I made by slicing a circle with the correct radius (magenta). I also slicedthe end off of the original davit.

Then I lofted the sections individually and joined them together. You can see the chopped offend better in the image below (green).

The image below shows how I made the flanges that fill the opening in the I-beam at several locations. I simply sliced the original beam on either side of the flange, keeping the flange part (green) and deleting the rest.

The next image shows the next flange after I have sliced it, deleted the unneeded parts and recoloredthe flange part green.

This process was repeated down the davit.

Last I sliced it for the lower section.

I didn’t like the cleat, so I changed it too, making the inner circles larger so that it wasn’t straight.

The images below show the new davit on the aft escape hatch. Note that I also moved the hole and AS, which wasn’t as difficult as I thought it might be.

At this point I’m thinking that I will just use this style as I think it looks best and will be the strongest.

Last night I did the wood deck for the bridge deck. I thought it was pretty cool and simple the way I did it.I started once again by tracing the outline from the plans, this time the Bridge Deck Grating Plan View, using polylines. The plans show the extended platform forward that Batfish doesn’t have, so I had to modify it a bit, ut fortunately the plans show the bulkhead line so I used it as a guide.

Next I copied the tracing and Part 11 (the Fairwater) to my deck template, and extruded the polyline.

I then moved the template up to the level of the deck…

…And did the intersect command using all three pieces.

Next, I copied the Fairwater back into position…

…Extruded the deck outline to the bottom of the deck created by the intersect command…

…Subtracted it from the fairwater, and joined it to the deck. Easy as pie!

At this point, I traced the portable plate cover for the engine air induction valve.

I also traced the outline for the “Teak Block for Portable Cover over Antenna Lead-In” and began the process of making it. I first extruded the outline, but AutoCad wouldn’t let me round both “corners” on the flanges. So I diced and sliced it. Mirrored the rounded side of one “Arm”...

…Joined the sides together…

…And Polar arrayed it around the circle, and joined the pieces together.

To make the screws I had to fudge a bit. I lofted a 0.004” circle (top) with a 0.005” circle (bottom). Both the screw tops and fillets (which are 0.0025”) are below 0.005”, so I’m not sure how well this will print, but we will see.

I finished the piece off by adding an extruded circle for a base.

I then copied it, the air induction portable plate cover and tracings of a couple of unknown holes (possibly for davits?) to the model. I had to move the holes inboard slightly because they were right on the edge.

I cut the holes with extruded circles and joined the teak plate cover to the deck. I haven’t done anything with the air induction cover yet, for obvious reasons.

The last thing I did for the night was copy the covered hatch part I saved to the model.

Continuing from this morning’s update, I lowered the covered hatch into the deck…

…Copied everything to the side, out of the way, extruded the outline (red) down to the bottom of the hatch and subtracted it from the deck.

On the one I copied to the side, I extruded the outline through the deck and found the intersection of the extrusion and the deck, which is shown as red in the image below.

I then sliced the hatch at the bottom of the battens and deleted the battens.

Next I extruded the center circle down through the new cover and subtracted it. In the image below the hatch layer is turned off.

I then sliced the new hatch at the bottom of the battens, subtracted the lower base, and turned the old hatch layer back on.

Returning to the original deck, I deleted the old hatch…

…And moved the new hatch in place. At this point, I noticed that there were some issues with the cover that would be an issue when printing so although I didn’t document it I extruded rectangles around the outline to “frame” the hatch, as can be seen in the image below.

I then joined it to the deck.

Next, I moved to the hatch in the bridge, which although it wasn’t covered, was recessed. I started by copying a recessed hatch with the guidelines into position.

I then extruded the outline into the deck to the bottom of the batten base, subtracted it and copied a hatch (w/o the pivoting guide) over the space...

…Then lowered the hatch down to the cut surface…

…And joined it to the deck. The final two images show the deck with the bridge in place.

Continuing on the conning tower/ bridge deck, I modified the portable plate cover for the engine air induction valve,moved it and cut the aft end of the outline as I did on the main deck hatches.

I then cut the forward end and the angled parts.

Last I cut the curved part at the forward end of the gun platform.

The next thing I did was to make the platform for the aft mast. The image below shows the traced base after it has been extruded into the deck. The extruded circle needed to remake the attachment hole is also shown.

The green extrusion was joined to the deck then the red extruded circle was subtracted.

Here it is with the mast in place.

I also made a platform for the lower part of the telescope shears…

…And the bridge. The image below shows the underside of the bridge, with the fairwater layer turned off. You can see how I traced the outline of the bottom (blue).

The image below shows it flipped over, with the fairwater layer turned on and the bridge layer turned off.

The blue line was extruded to the bottom of the battens…

…And joined it to the deck.

Next I copied the bridge to the side and subtracted it from the fairwater, to reestablish the connections.

After this I went back to the Antenna Lead-In cover block, which I needed to move because when I moved the unknown holes in for printability, I didn’t move the cover block, and the relative positioning just looked wrong. Also, the tracing I originally used was from the deck plan. When I looked at the detail, the radius I had used needed to be scaled 110% to match the dimension provided. So I copied the fairwater, with the extruded circle outline to the side.

On the copied fairwater, I used the Intersect Command to isolate the cover block, and then scaled it up 110%.

On the original fairwater, I subtracted the extrusion to remove the original cover block.

To repair the battens I drew a rectangle on a section, copied it to the other effected battens, extruded them…

…And joined them to deck. I then moved the new cover block into position…

After my last post, I decided to modify all of the hatches on the wood deck to make the longitudinal sides more visible by shaving off a bit of the outside battens on them. On most of them I shaved off 0.004”, a couple of them (with hand holes on the effected batten) I shaved off 0.0025” and one I shaved off at the hinge. The difference is subtle, but I think it makes the hatches a little more identifiable. The images below show Before and After shots of the effected parts.

Part 2 – Before

Part 2 – After

Part 3 – Before

Part 3 - After

Part 5 – Before

Part 5 – After

Part 6 – Before

Part 6 - After

Part 7 – Before

Part 7 - After

Part 8 – Before

Part 8 – After

Part 9 – Before

Part 9 – After

The only thing I have left to do to complete the model is the dashboard on the bridge, which I hope to get to tonight. If not, it may be a while before I get to it. I’m leaving for Vicksburg, MS tomorrow and will be gone all week. The good thing is that I am driving through Little Rock and am going to stop and see USS Razorback.

I believe you may have sent me these pix back in March or April when I initially was working on the bridge. I actually started to make it back then, but then I received a couple of pictures from Scott (lucky dog getting to go on the bridge), and the configuration was different, so I put it on hold.

In August, when I finally got to go tour Batfish, I illicitly climbed up on the cigar deck and held my camera up to take the pictures I posted on August 1. Unfortunately, as I said then, this didn’t really clear things up, because the miscellaneous items weren’t completely assembled. I’m still at a loss as to how to handle this, so I haven’t started it yet. Plus, I am in Vicksburg at the US ACOE Waterways Experiment Station and the only reason I am able to post this is because nobody is around at the moment and I need help starting up a LISST for determining the particle size distribution of my samples.